Daily Archives: January 5, 2015

Back in Adelaide my Cave Diving buddy, Hugh, has kindly been accommodating us all while we get the car all serviced and roadworthy before heading west again. We have almost done 10,000 km already in just over two months and Hugh has come up with a more fuel efficient way of towing the Camprite Trailer. I like his enthusiasm but unless I can get 4 bikes hitched up for the family it will take us 10 years to complete our big lap! What do you reckon?

New Fat Bike Camprite tow!

Thanks so much Hugh – it was great to catch up again after too long, and I hope it doesn’t take too long for you to recover from our visit. As we pass through the Nullarbor I suspect I will get a renewed interest in a future diving trip out there again.

Some of the other day trips we included in the Kangaroo Island trip were Raptor Domain, one of the kids favourites. We watched the three shows, Venom Pit, In-flight (bird show) and Fang-tastic, where the two very knowledgeable guides showed us local reptiles like scorpions, tiger snakes, and some less venomous ones (pythons, bearded dragons, sleepy lizards), and of course the bird show. We enjoyed waking up Casper the barn owl, seeing him pop out of his hollow tree then proceeding to hop across our knees, but the performances by the hobby and wedgetail eagle were also pretty impressive. Hannah, Oscar and Xavier all jumped up to hold a boobok owl.

Cliffords Honey Farm

Fossilised Whale Tooth

Rosenberg´s goanna

Ligurian Beehive in cave

Glossy Black Cockatoo

Xavier and I went on a hunt for the rare Glossy Black Cockatoo, and found a dozen of them only a few kilometres from our camp. Only about 200 live on the whole island.

Next stop was Cliffords honey farm whose pure Ligurian bees were introduced from Italy by early settlers and today Kangaroo Island has the purest Ligurian bees, even exporting them back to Italy. We all tasted the honey ice-cream before moving on and yes it was good. Later that day whilst exploring a cave in D’Estrees Bay we found a cave housing a wild Ligurian beehive. On the same beach Xavier found what appears to be a fossilised whale tooth and this made his day – let us know what you think it is from the picture above.

Along D’Estree Bay, in Cape Gantheaume Conservation Park we stopped to see the point where Ospreys have nested for 150 years. A huge nest sits on top of a flat rocky headland that just out at the end of the beach. Two chicks sat patiently in the nest awaiting the return of their parents, hopefully with a feed of fish. When I last visited 17 years ago the same nest had a different two chicks sitting there too.

Sea Lion

Seal Bay resident

Humpback whale skeleton

Vivonne Bay

Then we had to visit Seal Bay, home to the Australian Sea lion, where we wandered onto the beach to get a closer view of the sea lions who come to shore after 3 days swimming and feeding for a well deserved rest. At one end of the beach a boardwalk provides views of a Humpback Whale skeleton, placed in the dunes after the dead calf washed ashore in the 1980s. We took a minor detour on the way home to take in the azure waters and picturesque Vivonne Bay – we all loved Kangaroo Island and will be back!